True/False Film Fest Dispatch #3: ‘Barbara Forever,’ ‘Time and Water,’ ‘American Doctor’
The last day and a half of the 2026 True/False Film Fest saw the massive shift in the weather, from major thunderstorms and rain to a chilly cold front that made the coffee at all the local café’s taste even better. With heavy jackets and hoodies on, festival goers filled up the theaters even more, showing there is nothing better for cold weather, and losing an hour of sleep, than being in a movie theater watching the three films below. But before getting into the films, I wanted to state my profound appreciation to the entire True/False team, include everyone in the press office who guided me through this first time festival experience, all the volunteers for giving their time to making sure every screening I was at ran smoothly (even one where the rain cut off the power but the True/False team communicated calmly with everyone once the power quickly returned, and restarted the movie for us). I also want to give a shout out again to all the local restaurants, bars, cafes, hotels, and hole in the walls in the city of Columbia for making it feel like a welcoming, open environment for artistic expression and conversation, as well as all of the musical acts for jamming before each screening, and the filmmakers for delivering a weekend full of fascinating, thought provoking cinema.
If you are wondering if this festival is worth the trip, I’d give it a glowing recommendation and hope to return as soon as next year. You won’t regret coming to True/False Film Fest, a gem of a film festival located in the heart of a low-key, hospitable, friendly college town. Now for the film, where each of these three films are spearheaded by female filmmakers at the top of their creative game, and also were companion films not just at True/False but at Sundance earlier this year. Their trips to True/False and Sundance made them some of the most acclaimed docs of the year, with audiences packed at each of their screenings throughout the festival; an intriguing mix of anticipation and massive expectations.
In making over one hundred films over the course of a fifty-year career, director Barbara Hammer was an American feminist icon, showcasing experimental filmmaking about gender dynamics, lesbian relationships, falling in love, aging unabashedly within one’s skin, and family life with her life partner Florrie R. Burke. In being one of the leading pioneers in creating lesbian films into their own genre, Hammers was one of a kind, with a curious mind that never turned off, all shooting the next thing, and refusing to slow down. In Barbara Forever, director Brydie O’Connor takes on the life of the LGBTQIA+ legend by taking Hammer’s own footage, voiceovers, interviews, and other materials to bio-documentary, using Hammer’s work as a tool to play with the form much like she would’ve if this was Hammer making the film. You don’t have to be a massive fan of forge a retrospective biography that doesn’t fit into the standard box of a convention Hammer’s to understand her impact on cinema, as we see footage of directors like Todd Haynes speak to why she was a highly influential voice that made them want to become directors. What O’Connor is able to do is convey Hammer’s originality, honesty, and pure love of women, the queer community through her cinematic expression. She was a rock star that continued to reinvent herself as she kept releasing films later in life, even chronicling her battle with ovarian cancer which caused her to pass away in 2019. It’s within this footage, and interviews with Burke, that O’Connor finds the romantic heart of Hammer, someone who was fearless with the work she showed on screen and was the same way when facing death in the face. Provocative, bold, candid, distinct, Barbara Forever is a beautiful tribute to an unsung hero of queer cinema, and will make you want to dive deep into Hammer’s filmography the moment it ends. (Grade: B)
“How do you say goodbye to what you thought you could never lose?” This quote from Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason rings heartbreakingly true throughout Sara Dosa’s latest film, Time and Water, which is about Magnason’s family relationship with the glaciers in his country and how the slow, painful loss of them are mirrored with the deaths of his elder family members. With this idea, Dosa uses Magnason’s own narrative to convey the sorrow in his heart for losing both of the familiar pillars of what has made him and his family whole for so many years, as members of his family were some of the first people in Iceland to investigate and document the glaciers for their historical archive. As Time and Water plays out, Dosa takes archival footage from the writer’s home videos to films from Iceland’s national archives to weave together this tender story about the sad reality of losing not only just some of the most beautiful things in our natural world due to climate change, but the feeling of not wanting to let go of those you love because you can’t imagine a world without them, much like a world without these glaciers. Dosa, whose last film Fire of Love was one of the best nature documentaries in recent memory and one of the best films of 2022, continues her elegant, confident direction from that film while adding expert, delicate touch of blending all the right elements of Magnason’s story, words together to create a real emotional journey that makes the audience look inward at how we treat the environment around us as well as how our time with our loved ones isn’t limitless. Time and Water is a comforting, ravishing, poignant examination of what we define as the wonders of our lives, and continues to showcase why Dosa is one of the strongest documentarians of her generation. (Grade: B+)
In the last two and a half years, more than 1,700 healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza, working hard to save as many lives as possible. With the threat of their hospitals being bombed at any moment, or not having enough supplies to save wounded children from the damage of the Israeli attacks, it’s a dangerous job that they selflessly are taking on in order to save innocent lives caught in the middle of an ongoing war. In her directorial debut, Poh Si Teng follows three American physicians, Dr. Thaer Ahmad, a Palestinian ER specialist from Chicago, Dr. Mark Perlmutter, a Jewish orthopedic surgeon from North Carolina, and Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon from California and the son of Pakistani immigrants, as they take multiple trips to Gaza over the course of the film, taking on cases that lead to the loss of limbs or complete life for children across Gaza, while hospital is slowly falling apart like many structures in the area. While it could be easy to exploit or take advantage of this tragedy, Si Teng is encouraged by the words of her subjects, that tell her to film everything she sees to spread the word of the damage this division has caused, leading to the lives of an entire youth generation slaughtered in the name of men in power wheedling weapons around with no thought about the destruction have created, and the lingering effects this has on the region and the rest of the world. American Doctor isn’t a political film, it’s a film about doing the right thing and making this ongoing situation a human issue, as we see the doctors head home to speak to political leaders, not to change their mind about their positions but to get some form of aid to stop the carnage from continuing. Using real footage within the operation room of the doctors operating on young patients, this sequences will lead you horrified at what is going on in Gaza, finishing with an ending that will leave you speechless and sickened at how hopeless this situation is, and how it would even be worse if these doctors weren’t going to risk their lives. American Doctor is an urgent documentary that’s speaking to our moment and will go down as one of the most important pieces of cinema from 2026. (Grade: A)
These reviews are from the 2026 True/False Film Fest.
- True/False Film Fest Dispatch #3: ‘Barbara Forever,’ ‘Time and Water,’ ‘American Doctor’ - March 9, 2026
- True/False Film Fest Dispatch #2: ‘Phenomena,’ ‘Who Moves America,’ ‘Landscapes of Memory’ - March 8, 2026
- 2026 True/False Film Fest Dispatch #1: ‘The Oldest Person in the World,’ ‘Broken English’ - March 6, 2026
True/False Film Fest Dispatch #3: ‘Barbara Forever,’ ‘Time and Water,’ ‘American Doctor’ 
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